Users obtain digital pictures and movies from a variety of sources including digital cameras, digitization of photographs taken with film cameras, etc. These digital cameras may be stand-alone cameras or may be integrated into other devices such as cell phones (including Smartphones).
A user may capture hundreds or thousands (or more) pictures and movies over the course of time using these various devices. The task of organizing these pictures often falls to the user of the device. Some systems provide a user interface that allows a user to sort through pictures using a timeline. Other systems allow a user to manually label and organize pictures into virtual albums. The software that creates the album may include a drag and drop user interface or may include labeling pictures taken with a common album (folder) name. Some systems have allowed a user to search by location on a map if a user takes the time to label the location of each picture.
Many devices add various non-image data to an image file which can be viewed by subsequent devices. For example, many devices might include a time and date stamp, a make and model of the camera used to capture the image, shutter speed, an indication whether a flash was used, etc. One standard image file format used by digital cameras is the EXIF file format standard. The EXIF format includes defined fields for defined types of data and includes open fields which can be used to enter non-defined data.